1. Fluency and The Moses Illusion The study of Song & Schwarz (2008):Song & Schwarz (2008): It is known that positive mood signal that the interaction between person and environment is going smoothly; therefore not much has to be done, and people can think heuristically. In contrast, negative mood signals that something is wrong and attention is needed; people have to think analytically (Bless et al., 1990; Bohner et al., 1992).Bless et al., 1990Bohner et al., 1992 Contributor© POSbase 2009

2. Fluency and The Moses Illusion Similarly, high processing fluency may signal that the interaction between person and environment is going smoothly; therefore not much has to be done, and people can think heuristically. In contrast, low processing fluency signals that something is wrong and attention is needed; people have to think analytically.processing fluency Song and Schwarz tested this assumption. © POSbase 2009

3. Fluency and The Moses Illusion In their experiment, they asked the question “How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?” The spontaneous solution most people provide is two, but thinking harder makes them notice that it was Noah, not Moses, who took the animals on the ark. © POSbase 2009

4. Fluency and The Moses Illusion When the task was written in a difficult-to-read font, only 53% of the participants said “2”, and 40% indicated that the question was ill-formed. When the question was in an easy-to-read font, 88% of the participants answered „2“, and only 6% said that the question was ill-formed. © POSbase 2009

5. Fluency and The Moses Illusion However, low processing fluency made participants also more think when confronted to an undubious question („Who invented the cuckoo clock?“). These second-thoughts led to an impairment of performance, presumably because participants corrected the first answer that came to mind, but was the correct one. © POSbase 2009

6. Fluency and The Moses Illusion In sum, easy processing signals that the situation is fine, eliciting heuristic processing, whereas processing difficulties signal problems and elicit analytical processing (see Alter et al., 2007, for a similar finding).Alter et al., 2007 © POSbase 2009